DOCTOR WHO - THE GREEN DEATH

Region 2 (UK) and Region 4

Director:
Michael Briant

Starring:
Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning, Nicholas
Courtney, Jerome Willis

THE SERIES

This
six-episode Doctor Who story, originally broadcast in May 1973,
seems to have lodged itself firmly in the public consciousness, even
though most people probably only remember it as "the one with the giant
maggots".

There's actually much more to it than that.
The story, about a company that creates a mutant strain of lethal maggots
by pumping toxic industrial sludge into a disused mine, is remarkably
prescient, bringing concerns about the environment to the fore. The story
was made in an era of industrial unrest, particularly in the coal mining
industry, which forms the backdrop to this story. Britain was only months
away from the three-day week, and questions about the ever-increasing
influence of international companies were beginning to be asked.

In Doctor Who terms, too, The
Green Death is regarded as a landmark story. It closed the show's
tenth-anniversary season with an event that marked the end of an
era.

The story is unusual in that it doesn't
feature alien creatures bent on conquering the Earth. Instead the villain
of the piece is Global Chemicals, run by the mysterious Boss (the
wonderful John Dearth). The maggots - deadly though they are - are merely
the by-product of the company's greater plan. The story is often accused
of being preachy, but in many ways it's concerns are even more valid today
than they were in 1973, when the effects of flower power were all the
rage.

The story features plenty of James Bond
movie-style action (if not James Bond movie-scale action!) The Doctor is
separated from his assistant (Jo Grant, played by Katy Manning) for much
of the story, leaving him to operate as a free agent, albeit one who's
ably assisted by the members of para-military organisation UNIT (United
Nations Intelligence Taskforce), headed by series regulars Brigadier
Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney), Captain Mike Yates (Richard
Franklin) and Sergeant Benton (John Levene).

A criticism that's often made of the
Pertwee era is that stories were often longer than they needed to be (long
stories meant that the costs of creating new sets and monsters could be spread
over more episodes). This would often manifest itself in episodes with
thinly-spread plots padded by a lot of ultimately pointless running
around. Happily, The Green Death largely avoids this, although
there's one episode where the Doctor gets to infiltrate a building
disguised as a milkman, and later as a cleaning lady, giving Pertwee
(whose background was in radio comedy) a chance to flex his comedic
muscles, by employing a couple of silly voices.

Production values for the story are
generally very high. There are some effects sequences that aren't entirely
convincing, (the CSO or Chromakey process - now widely known as
"green-screen" - was still in its infancy), but generally the programme
was benefiting from an adequate budget, and taking advantage of the
talented staff that the BBC had nurtured for decades.

THE DVD

DVDs from the BBC are often lamentable. Too
often they seem like they've been thrown together with precious little
care or thought. That's not an accusation you could level against BBC
Worldwide's Doctor Who releases, though, which even have their own
team of dedicated boffins, the
Doctor Who Restoration Team,
toiling away behind the scenes to give the programmes (which, let us not
forget, in this case represent TV shows made more than thirty years ago) a
wash and brush-up, with all the state-of-the-art improvement techniques at
the BBC's disposal. A comprehensive article about how these particular
episodes were restored is available
here.

The results are generally very impressive.
Much of the story was shot on 16mm film (with studio material shot on
videotape, as was usual for the BBC during most of the 70s and 80s).
Handled badly, 16mm source material can look terrible on DVD, but the
material here has been transferred expertly. There's no doubt that the
story looks better now on DVD than it ever has before. The colour balance
of the programme is more consistent (a very difficult thing to achieve
when you're mixing film and videotape), and is more naturalistic than it's
ever been before. The film still looks rather grainy, and even the
videotaped sequences exhibit low-levels of video noise, but this is well
within tolerance, and infinitely preferable to the alternative, which
would have been to sandblast the detail out of the image with excessive
noise reduction processing. Slight but noticeable improvements have also
been made to the CSO sequences, to reduce the tell-tale colour fringing
problems that almost inevitably occurred when the process was used.

The Restoration Team's efforts are slightly
undermined by the BBC's insistence that the six-part story (and the
supporting bonus materials) are all squeezed onto a single DVD-9 disc. The
six-part stories that Worldwide released during 2003, the show's fortieth
anniversary year, were presented on two-discs, allowing for increased
bitrate on the episodes, and much more room for the wonderful bonus
features. It seems absurd that the BBC can release three-disc sets for
peanuts when they want to (Boys From The Blackstuff, and The
Singing Detective, for example), but feel they have to hamstring what
is a prestigious showcase for their DVD range by restricting the longer
Doctor Who stories to one disc. Furthermore, the BBC has a policy of
keeping a percentage of the disc free in case tweaking is needed when a
title is re-authored for another territory. In some cases this has meant
that ten percent of the disc space has been completely wasted, although
here, mercifully, it's more like five percent.

Here these policies manifests itself in an
image that's perhaps never quite as sharp and detailed as it could have
been, and there are even fleeting instances where excessive compression
has caused MPEG blocking on rare occasions of rapid movement. It's a
compromise that walks a fine line, and, in this instance, it only just
maintains its balance. The average bitrate is a distinctly average
4.97Mb/s, rarely venturing above 6Mb/s.

There are more subtle improvements to the
story's sound, which is presented in its original mono format, in dual
mono 2.0, at 192kbps. Dialogue is always distinct (although there are a
few dodgy Welsh accents to contend with), and well integrated into the
mix.

BONUS FEATURES

The bonus features on a Doctor Who
disc are another feature that puts them streets ahead of the competition,
and those on The Green Death are excellent, catering for casual
fans of the show, and the series' more devoted hardcore fanatics.

The episodes are supported by a full-length
commentary track, by Producer Barry Letts, Script Editor Terence Dicks
(who probably knows more about Doctor Who than anyone else who's
ever worked on the show), and actress Katy Manning. This track was
recorded some time ago, to take advantage of Katy Manning's presence in
the UK (she now lives overseas), and was created before the Restoration
team adopted a revolving-door approach to the commentaries, shuffling
combinations of contributors to avoid people running out of steam, or,
conversely, anyone swamping the contributions of someone else. In this
case, though, the balance is a good one. There's a mutually-respectful
dynamic between them that works to the commentary's favour. Katy Manning
slightly dominates the track, as luvvies are wont to do, and some might
find her a little wearing after a couple of hours, but, taken in smaller
doses, the track is certainly worth listening to. The track features
plenty of timeworn anecdotes (none of them as salacious as they probably
could have been), and plenty of occasions when the participants somewhat
reluctantly acknowledge the show's shortcomings. Their love for the
series, and, in particular, for the late Jon Pertwee, shines through.

The commentary track is light on specific
detail and hard facts. but this is more than compensated for by Richard
Molesworth's outstanding Production Commentary, which is presented
as a subtitle option. Here you'll discover the nitty-gritty trivia of the
production: facts and figures, details about changes made to the script,
about the locations used, and general background information on the cast
and crew members. Although primarily of interest to fans of the show, it's
just as likely that it will add considerably to the enjoyment of more
casual viewers, who might be watching the episodes a second or third time
with the Production Commentary on. In terms of the value for money
the Production Commentary offers the consumer, it must be one of
the most cost-effective bonus features on the DVD. In reviews and
discussions about the Doctor Who DVDs this feature is often
overshadowed by the more elaborately-mounted bonus features, but it forms
an essential backbone to every Doctor Who disc.

There's always a danger that the
contributors for commentary tracks are chosen as much for their "marquee
value" as much as for what they might be able to bring to the microphone.
Often a key contributor - the writer or the director, for example - is overlooked in
favour of a more marketable name. Here, though, we do get to hear from the
writer, Robert Sloman, in a tight seven-minute video interview, in which
he discusses the ideas behind the story. The disc also features a
seven-minute video interview with guest star Stewart Bevan, who plays
environmentalist Professor Clifford Jones, in which he discusses how he
got the role (he was dating Katy Manning at the time), and places his
appearance in Doctor Who into the context of his lengthy career.

In another featurette, Visual Effects
(11m), Colin Mapson explains how some of the story's effects were
created, and shows, Blue Peter-style, how the giant maggot props
were created. You'd probably need some real skill to make one as
convincing as the ones in the story, but at least you'll get a good idea
of the techniques used to create them.

The highlight of the bonus materials is Global Conspiracy?, a spoof documentary about the mysterious goings on
in the village of Llanfairfach (twinned with Mortverte, France and
Grundertod, Germany), fronted by campaigning investigative journalist
Terry Scanlon (wonderfully played by The League of Gentlemen's Mark
Gatiss). This ten-minute short features interviews with several of The
Green Death's cast members, playing the same characters as they did in
1973! We discover what happened to the men who ran Global Chemicals (one
of them is now Director General of the BBC), and catch up with
hippie-turned-tycoon Professor Jones. Fabulous stuff, with plenty of tiny
gags for those who go looking for them! (See if you can spot the mistakes
on the front page of the Newport Echo!)

The disc also features a comprehensive
Photo Gallery (9m), which features photo's from various sources,
including those taken for reference by the set department, along with
Frank Bellamy's thumbnail illustrations, which accompanied the show's
listings in the Radio Times. These are animated with dissolves and
morphs, and accompanied by a suite of sound effects from the story.

Finally there's an Easter Egg, but this
time it's one that will only be of interest to the real anoraks: it's
a collection of continuity
announcements from the story's various airings on the BBC. [Click and highlight to reveal].

SUMMARY

BBC Worldwide have once again excelled
themselves with a terrific Doctor Who DVD. It would, however, have
been better if they'd given the episodes more room to breathe, by moving
the bonus features to a second disc.

There's obviously been a great deal of care
put into authoring the disc, to achieve an optimum balance between the
story and the bonus material. Given the disc capacity limitations imposed
on the producers, it's impossible to fault the disc.

The story itself is robust, and although
the trappings are now a little dated, the ideas behind it are are
pertinent as ever.

The bonus materials have enough depth to be
of great interest to the fans, but they're not so nerdy that they won't
alienate the casual viewer: a tricky equation to get right. The Global
Conspiracy? mockumentary proves that Doctor Who fans are more
than capable of poking fun at the series they love, and at their own
obsessions.